https://imgur.com/MPFKkEU.jpg

Discord icon, WhatsApp icon and Street Fighter VS Wording Sources, created using Sketch

So today I decided to do some comparisons on two apps I'm using the most currently, which are Discord and WhatsApp.

READ: Persuade Someone to Use Discord 101

~~Not going to write Potato Phones 101 for now even though a week had past since the last Potato Phones 101 post is posted~~

Discord

https://i.imgur.com/dSsPqTe.png

Source

Discord was initially launched in 2015, and mostly of the groups (or better known as servers) are for gaming purposes. But somehow this new kid in the block has features which mainstream messaging apps lack of.

√ Clean Chats

Everyone wants clean chats. Among all social apps I used so far, Discord has the cleanest message management system, as one server can contain more than one text channel. Which means you can talk main on-topic stuff in the General channel, talk something else in the Off Topic channel, ~~and not forgetting sharing your cute kitten photos in the Memes channel.~~ What's more you can directly react on a message with an emote by simply tap and hold the message. Yay no emote spams.

√ Edit and Delete

Regretted sending something? A typo? Tap and hold the message and edit/delete the message anytime.

Note: Users with permissions to Manage Messages have the right to delete your messages if you go off track.

√ Nicknames

Wanna change your name without changing your main username? You asked the right app. Discord has the ability to set server-specific nicknames, which works as a second display name of yours in the particular server without worrying changing your main username in the app.

√ Administration

Compared to WhatsApp, Discord has a better administration system. Offenders not only can be managed by the server owner, admins (and moderators too) assigned by the server owner/existing admins will help take action of offenders too. They even have the banning system. So once being permanently banned, you'll never ever type stuff in the server. Well that's worse than a kick TBH. :banhammer:

√ Roles

So you think only admins can have roles? Think again. Members too can have cosmetic roles which acts like the achievements system in games without getting their messaging permissions changed. Some servers can assign roles in order to gain access to certain text/voice channels, which acts like a ticket to access certain channels. Plus, roles are mentionable. You can directly ping people according to their roles. Pretty good stuff, eh?

√ Custom Emotes

~~Yes I'm bored with the system emojis.~~ So Discord came out with custom emotes to show your feelings which can't be expressed through normal system emojis. Members with permission to add/manage emojis can add up to 50 static emotes and 50 animated emotes (but animated ones need Discord Nitro which I'll mention it later) in one server. What's more some servers provide global emotes for everyone's usage even you don't have a Discord Nitro subscription. Now time to eat some stuff. :nom:

√ Bots

Bots can do almost anything: Adminstration, member/message logging, third party integrations, music playing, image searching, ~~and also trolling~~. You name it, there's always a bot for that purpose.

https://imgur.com/hnqTkXs.jpg

↑ Pure troll

√ Voice Chat

Seriously, one-to-one voice chat is so yesterday as group calling is already a thing nowadays. More friends on call = More fun

~~Your voice will become potato in case your connection goes potatoes~~

√ Notifications

Apparently Discord knows the pain of notifications. :pain: So they also have a "Only @mentions" option available in the Notification Settings of every server in Discord. So feel free to come back anytime without being forced to due to the annoying message notifications. Staring WhatsApp

√ Web/Desktop Version

The cheese of Discord's GOOD part. You can have 3 platforms to choose from - Desktop, Webpage, or your mobile. As long you have a good internet connection, your Discord is always good to go regardless of devices. Neither of them will interfere your usage of it.

So far this is the GOOD part I seen in Discord. Now for the BAD part.

× Discord Nitro

Once upon a time, there is a messaging app named Discord. He is a perfect dude, with all the things a user wants.

Everything goes well until Him comes in. His name is Nitro. dragged away

cough OK I'll be serious here. Discord's main weakness is this particular membership system which restricts the "more fun" zone of Discord. Animated emotes yes I'm taking about you. With a Nitro subscription, you can also use emotes from one server in another server (static and animated ones too).

Another fact about Nitro is you can change the randomly-assigned tag number of yours.

Take my Discord ID for example (feel free to add me but I'll just ignore you), the #6733 in my username Misty.EXE#6733 is the part where you can change it anytime as long you have a Nitro subscription.

× File Size Limitations

Another main pain in Discord where you can only upload 8MB files in maximum in a single message (20MB for Nitro users FYI), which is way below the standard attachment size (25MB FYI) of main email providers on the internet. :pain:

× Text Limit

FOR TEXT WALL BUILDERS ONLY

2000 characters per message. Seriously. This number includes emote commands too. :pain:

OK I'm done for Discord. Your turn WhatsApp.

WhatsApp

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Source

Initially launched in January 2009, WhatsApp is well-known as the pioneers of mobile messaging in both iOS and Android. Currently owned by Facebook.

√ Simple (and user-friendly) Design

Really simple design. What's customisable it's just your profile photo, personal About and chat wallpaper. Nothing else to comment.

√ Text Limit

FOR TEXT WALL BUILDERS ONLY

2^16 characters, means a whopping 65536 characters you can stuff in. I wonder will anyone reach this. But apparently you can only type 65535 characters in which I dunno why.

~~Wait I once did it. Attempted sending the whole Phantom of the Opera script to my friend but failed.~~

√ File Size Limitations

With exception to videos, WhatsApp can send basically anything of any size ~~(as long your data plan is able to take it that's for sure)~~.

√ Secured Chats

WhatsApp mentioned to me about this 24/7 and I'm annoyed about it so I decided to put in a point for this. WhatsApp uses end-to-end AES encryption to secure the messages over the internet, which means even staffs of WhatsApp cannot read it unless you're the one receiving the messages. Interesting. More info here.

√ Amnesia-friendly

A good thing about WhatsApp is you don't need to remember your password since there isn't any. The only way to login is by verifying your phone number and you're good to go.

√ Message Deletion

Same as Discord, but you have only have 1 hour to regret it. ~~Which I dunno why 1 hour since most people had read the message lul.~~ Messages deleted will be shown "This message is deleted" in both sides of the sender and receiver(s).

https://imgur.com/arK70ia.jpg

How deleted messages looked like in WhatsApp

OK now for the BAD part.

× Compression

Photos and videos are compressed before you even send it. Imagine a 720p video can basically looked like a 144p quality video you watched in YouTube (yes for the sake of file size reduction) which is terrible most of the times. TBH, I do not recommend WhatsApp for lossless media sharing as it may literally kill the quality in it. There's a way to solve this issue but I'm not planning to explain it now (currently past 7k characters lul, perhaps after this post or the next Potato Phones 101 post).

× Groups

Road trip? One group. Badminton tournament? One group. Family? Another group. School? Another group and the list goes on and on. In average a person will have at least 10 groups of different topics but consisting of the same members in it. Which is another pain to most of the users.

× Notifications

The cheese of the BAD zone of WhatsApp. WhatsApp has a terrible notification managing system in my opinion. Despite they have a Mute option with them, some people will still be annoyed with the number of unread messages at the side there, which is just literally below the mute icon.

OCD INTENSIFIES

Plus, one message = one ping in the phone. ~~Imagine you got 43185964 messages coming in. :pain:~~

× Mentioning

WhatsApp came out a new mentioning system similar to Discord back in 2016. But this mentioning thingy is wayyyyy terrible implemented in WhatsApp. Discord at the other side at least had a page dedicated for all the mentions got since Day 1 you joined it ~~which it looks more like Hall of Mentions to me lul~~

× WhatsApp Web

Another good but terribly implemented feature by WhatsApp. Your phone (and computer that's for sure) must be connected to the internet in order to use WhatsApp Web. Indirectly this means your computer's WhatsApp is disconnected if your phone disconnects. But a good thing about WhatsApp Web is that they'll remind your phone's battery in case it's running out.

× Too Bright

My eyes. I want a dark version of WhatsApp.

EXTRA: MORE Social Apps!!

I'll just toss in the GOOD part of them but not the BAD part of them since I rarely use them.

Telegram

https://i.imgur.com/kwUSfit.png

Source

Launched in 2013, this app does not gain much popularity in Malaysia but had really good reputation in Russia (since they made this). Most teachers in Malaysia use it which I dunno why ~~hiding something behind students perhaps?~~

√ Lossless Media Sharing

Photos (not sure for videos though) in lossless quality. Nothing much to explain about this.

√ Stickers

Well Telegram doesn't have custom emotes like Discord, but they at least have stickers to use with. What's more you can create yours from the Sticker Bot in the app.

√ Secret Chats

Some secret to say? Get to Telegram, select New Secret Chat, chat away, boom. Your message history will be deleted for good after this.

√ Telegram Web/Desktop

This is way better implemented than WhatsApp. ~~OK let's just forget that we need our phone to verify your first time login to the desktop/web version of Telegram,~~ everything is working well even you don't have your phone available at a later time.

Note: At the time of writing this post, I stumbled upon this where Russia authorities attempted to ban Telegram due to the refusal of providing the encryption key of Telegram. Instead of being banned, this app becomes more popular among Russians lul.

LINE

https://i.imgur.com/u7LXcp9.png

Source

Launched in 2011, this Korean-originated app (Naver, the main company for LINE is really from Korea FYI) gained awesome popularity in Japan (and Thailand too as I noticed in my last trip to Thailand), which is also one of their main communication apps around them.

√ CCCCUUUTTTTEEEEE!!!

They have their own characters, they have their own anime, they have their merchandise, they even have games of them. Only one word I can express. In Shiina's voice CCCCUUUUTTTTEEEEEEE!!

Anyway here's the 21-second cutout of this scene where I meant (scene adapted from Angel Beats! OVA - Stairway to Heaven). You're welcome. https://youtu.be/VTsLGUj0Aiw

√ Changeable Themes

You'll get Brown and Cody's LINE theme upon installation. Yay free cute themes. You can get more from the Themes Store actually ~~but I'm too broke for that~~

√ Stickers

Stickers ALL AROUND THE WORLD!! ~~But I'm too broke for that~~

WeChat

https://cdn.neow.in/news/images/uploaded/2017/09/1506288661_maxresdefault_story.jpg

Source

Launched back in 2011 by Tencent (aka the official developer for PUBG Mobile), this app gained awesome popularity among the Chinese community in China and Asian countries.

√ Official Accounts

WeChat has a feature which enables you to subscribe to official accounts, which includes news companies, app developers, famous people and more. ~~Though you can't contact them directly~~ but at least you can get their broadcast messages in first hand.

√ Stickers

Well I must admit WeChat's sticker system is one of the best among messaging apps I used. Not only you can get all (yes it's really all) sticker packs for free from the Sticker Store, you can also set (or directly save from your friends') custom stickers for the stickers not available in the Sticker Store.

~~My sisters have a library of Little Fish (official English name of that character, aka Mushroom Head or 冬菇頭 in Chinese) stickers in their phone FYI~~

√ Extra Emojis

Apart of all the emojis available in WhatsApp (all WhatsApp emojis are from iOS FYI), WeChat also have their own emoji set in addition to the current emoji selections.

https://imgur.com/38zEOp2.jpg

Extra selections of emojis available in WeChat

Alright, that's all for now ~~wew more than 10k characters for the first time lul~~. Read it till the end? Feed me some snacks to nom with I'm hungry now since I'd spent 3 days writing this.

Possibility of next post:-

Lossless Quality Sharing in WhatsApp (75%)
Potato Phones 101 - Developer Options (25%)

See you on the next post!

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- Misty.EXE